Chapter 31: On a Rock

We spent that night alongside the French Broad River across from the Hot Springs Campground. Despite its name, the river wasn't that broad; we were still close enough to the campground to see individual guests moving about. I spent a few long introspective minutes watching the reflected lights from various RVs and cabins dance upon the water. Aside from the far-off rumble of passing trucks on the highway, the only sound we could hear was the omnipresent roar of the river. The endless rush of water permeated our every thought and even our dreams; Bandito had recurring nightmares that he was drowning, and awoke several times during the night convinced that the river was flooding.

We were far from alone in camping by the river. Much as I had expected, Hobbes had not secured work for stay at Elmer's, and had ended up tenting nearby. We were joined by a few anonymous section hikers and what seemed to be a local couple too cheap to spring for a sleazy motel. If I was worried about anything, it wasn't flooding; the A.T. is often used by nocturnal predators as a game trail, and we were lined up and neatly packaged like sushi on a conveyor belt.

My biggest problem would not be drowning or being devoured during the night, however. It would be the vagaries of the human digestive track. Perhaps not used to eating so much and so richly, when I awoke in the morning my need for a bathroom was intense and excruciating. I decided to try to make it back to a gas station on the road, but after having waddled fifty yards or so I realized I would never make it. To my left was the river. To my right was a sheer rock face, leading straight up. I didn't appear to have many options. Digging a cathole on the trail was unacceptable, and way too public. Although I had lost many of my inhibitions on the trail, taking a dump in full view of other people was not something I was prepared to do.

Miraculously, I found a path leading off to my right. Out of desperation or necessity, I took it. The trail ascended an almost vertical slope. A rope had been strung from a tree to help climbers pull their way up. I didn't know where it was leading me, but I didn't really care. Reaching the top, I realized my folly. Level ground was scarce, and worse, there was hardly any loose soil at all for me to dig into. Acute intestinal distress won out over sanity, however, and I soon found myself squatting on a boulder overlooking the river. If anyone nearby had happened to look up at that moment, they would have been very sorry indeed. And so would I.

Strictly adhering to the rules of Leave No Trace, I did not simply cover my waste with rhododendron leaves and then walk away as quickly and inconspicuously as possible. That would have been gross and irresponsible. The only rational, responsible thing to do was to bag up my stool in a ziplock and dispose of it back in civilization. Before I could do so, however, I was attacked by a condor the size of a small school bus! Screaming girlishly, I half-scrambled, half-fell down the cliff side back to the trail. The condor screeched and dove at me in anger, scratching my arms and face relentlessly with its vicious, razor sharp talons, until I returned to where Bandito was sitting, calmly eating breakfast. At that point, and to my great relief, the condor mysteriously took off, disappearing without a trace.

"Did you see that thing?" I panted.

"What are you talking about?" asked Bandito, looking up.

"I was just-- and then this giant condor! And-- Oh, never mind," I sighed.

I thought about returning to the rock, to be responsible and properly dispose of my effluence, but I figured I might have strayed too close to the condor's nest. And I didn't want to provoke it again. Once had been bad enough.

"I didn't know there were condors in North America," said Bandito, alarmed.

"Me neither," I said, still catching my breath. And then I went to wash my hands in the river.

I was immensely relieved when we hiked out later that morning, justifiably eager to put the pain and humiliation I had just experienced behind me. No doubt, my next horrible embarrassment would be lurking just around the corner.

The passage of time on the trail is marked by many things: sunrise and sunset; the crossing of significant landmarks; and any and all meals. On this day we would cross no significant landmarks. We ate lunch on the Rich Mountain fire tower, and by sunset had arrived at the Little Laurel Shelter to make camp. Nothing at all of significance happened, save for a conversation we had with an older section hiker we met while eating lunch. He told me that, especially as a vegetarian, I had to be careful about what I ate while on the trail. Some people will tell you that the only thing that matters is your total caloric intake. Others will tell you to only eat protein. This guy wanted to impress upon me, upon us, that the only thing that mattered were complex carbohydrates. If I learned anything that day, it was that if I didn't eat enough complex carbs, I would die. I made a mental note, determined to become an expert at not dying.

Hiking through the woods day after day can be an incredibly tedious and uninteresting thing, if you let it. It can also be the paragon of tranquility, an unending series of zen epiphanies, or the most freeing experience in the world. Much like any subjective experience, however, what you take out of it depends on what you bring into it. I like to think I found a happy medium, where I could enjoy the startling beauty of nature when it presented itself, but quickly enough retreat into my own thoughts when the going was just sheer drudgery. That day, I think, was more of the latter.

Nature had stayed behind in town. She had inexplicably developed an alarming and unexplained bruise on her thigh that had become so painful it was affecting her mobility. Elaine from Maine had been at Elmer's, and had taken a look at the bruise for her. Although Nature had been initially hesitant to visit a doctor, Elaine had been worried enough about it to convince her to do so. Bandito and I both hoped Nature would be okay, and missed her greatly. As it was, we'd end up camping with Brian, Alyson, and a young woman section hiker from Brooklyn with a very ill-behaved dog.

Seeking to diffuse any lingering tension, I immediately apologized to Brian for spilling orange juice on him the day before, and apologized to Alyson for pretty much being a failure as a human being. They may have been happy enough just to see people they knew, and forgave me readily. I wasn't about to let it go so easily, however. I still felt really bad for the way I had treated them, so I let them in on a personal secret.

"Yesterday, at dinner," I began, "Well, Elmer makes his guests answer stupid questions. It's kind of a tradition, you know?"

They nodded, listening intently as they ate their supper.

"So yesterday the question was, if you could pick anyone in the world to be your parents, other than your actual parents, who would they be? And I said Brian and Alyson," I confessed, emotional. "I said you guys. Because when I look at you, I see who I want to be. You're like the perfect couple, and--"

I couldn't go on. Zelda, their attack dog, came over and licked the tears from my cheek.

"Okay, that was the worst story ever," said Alyson.

"Yeah, I don't buy it at all," Brian laughed. "Did he really ask that, though?"

"Yes," said Bandito. "But M.C. is lying about everything else."

"I knew it!" said Alyson.

"How dare you," I muttered, betrayed.

"Who did you say, Bandito?" asked Alyson.

"Jackie Chan and Natalie Portman."

Brian wolf-whistled. Alyson laughed.

"M.C. said Bill and Melinda Gates," continued Bandito.

"How dare you," I repeated.

"You know they're giving away their fortune, right?" asked Brian. "So you wouldn't inherit anything."

No, I hadn't known that. Mortified, and as usual, I left to cry myself to sleep.

Chapter 30: Death by Murder

We arrived at the Sunnybank before any of the previous night's guests had even left. A sign was taped to the back door saying "No Vacancy," but I figured it was just an old sign. How could there be no vacancies? The day hadn't even started yet! For her part, Nature wasn't worried about getting a room. She'd already made a reservation.

"I thought they didn't take reservations," I said, suspicious.

"I didn't think so either, but I called them up yesterday afternoon, and they let me," explained Nature, shrugging.

"Did anyone in the Party Group have a cell phone?" I pondered.

"They all did," said Bandito.

"It was a rhetorical question," I snapped. "Sorry, Bandito. I'm just thinking out loud."

"You're always so mean to me," whimpered Bandito. "I want my mommy."

"Oh stop it," I chided, not taking him seriously.

"Can I help you?" said a voice over our shoulder. It was Elmer.

"Yeah, hi, I called about a room yesterday?" Nature inquired tentatively.

"You're Nature?" asked Elmer. "Yeah, you're all set, but we haven't cleaned the rooms yet."

"Okay," said Nature, "Is it okay if I leave my stuff here? And go get a bite to eat?"

Elmer nodded. Nature slipped her pack off.

"I'm just going to the diner across the street." said Nature, "You guys want to join me when you're done?"

"Sure," I said.

"And you boys?" said Elmer. "What can I do for you?"

"We're looking for bunks," said Bandito.

"Sorry, boys," said Elmer. "We're all full."

"But--" I sputtered, gesturing to the departed Nature. "But--" I sputtered, gesticulating inarticulately. "How is that possible?"

"Someone called last night," Elmer explained, "Made a reservation for seven people. Sorry."

"But I thought you didn't take reservations!" I cried. And, realizing who it probably was, I swore loudly.

Elmer shrugged.

"Can we check back in later?" I asked hopefully, "Maybe one of them will break their leg on the way here! Maybe they won't make it!"

"I mean, maybe," said Elmer, "But I'm not making any promises."

We left our packs and stalked across the street to have breakfast.

Nature was eating with Brian and Alyson when we walked in. She waved to us.

"You remember Brian and Alyson," said Nature.

I did. "Oh, hi," I said, knocking Brian's orange juice onto the floor.

"What the hell was that for?" said Brian, standing up, his shirt sopping wet.

"What the heck is wrong with you, M.C.?" asked Bandito.

"I don't know, I'm terribly sorry." I mumbled, grabbing some napkins to wipe off Brian's shirt. "Waitress! Can he get another orange juice? On me, I insist!"

"You're lucky I don't sic my dog on you," Brian growled, backing down slightly.

"That's a terrible thing to say about your wife," I said, affronted.

"No, you idiot! Her!" And Brian pointed out the window, to where Zelda, his and Alyson's ferocious attack dog, was drooling menacingly on the sidewalk.

"Oh, sorry," I stammered, then turned to Alyson. She glared at me. "Sorry?"

And then she punched me in the face.

Eating my french toast was significantly more awkward and less satisfying with wads of toilet paper shoved up my nose and a trickle of mucussy blood seeping down my throat, but I suffered through it.

My mood worsened when we returned to the Sunnybank to find the Party Group arrived, and of course they had all gotten rooms. One of them had deviously made the reservation the night before.

I was distraught, and I complained to Elmer. "But we got here first! If you stuck to your own rules--"

"I beg your pardon?" scoffed Elmer.

"--then we'd have rooms, not these chumps," I continued, undaunted. I turned to the Party Group. "I'm sorry, but I think we deserve it just a little more than you guys!"

"I should kick the crap out of you," said Dude Nozzle, stepping towards me, "except it looks like someone else beat me to it."

"Yeah, what happened to his face?" whispered one of the others.

"I think he's just ugly," said her friend.

"I mean, do any of you care about having a gourmet, vegetarian meal?" I asked, backing away, scared and insulted. "I bet you're not even planning to stay for dinner! You're probably just going to throw your packs in a room and then go off to drink hooch under the bridge!"

"Hey, that's not a bad idea," said Fat Stick. And that's when I flipped out and killed all of them. I blacked out, and when I came to I was chewing on Dude Nozzle's spleen in a pool of blood and viscera. Elmer had passed out, and Bandito was throwing up into the bushes.

Or maybe I just imagined that last part. We eventually worked out a deal with Elmer so that we could stay for dinner, but then we'd hike on. One of the Party Group offered to let me have his bed, but I couldn't tell if he was being condescending or truly magnanimous. Either way, I turned him down, and Bandito and I went to get showers at the local campground.

The campground was at the other end of town. The woman working in the camp store told us we'd have to buy shower passes at the Spa. Which was at the other end of town. And that was when I flipped out and killed everybody. Again. Luckily for me, there weren't that many people in the store that day.

"Why do you keep doing this?" asked Bandito, almost pleading with me. He refused to help me stuff the corpses into a beer cooler on moral grounds. Nothing was going my way.



Having finally showered, we did our laundry, I ate a delicious veggie burger, and then we went to hang out in the Sunnybank's music room until dinner. The music room was awesome, with a poorly tuned honky-tonk piano and a random collection of other instruments, including a violin. I had taken a Suzuki method lesson once, so I picked up the violin and it promptly exploded, its strings popping off in random directions and making horrific twanging noises. What a terrible instrument! Plus I may have accidentally sat on it, so I threw it out the window and hoped nobody would notice it was gone.

Dinner was fantastic, everything we'd ever dreamed of an more. I had two or three helpings of soup, two servings of salad, a plate of pasta, and a slice of homemade key lime pie. I wouldn't eat again for a week. The conversation was charming and entertaining, and I quickly forgot all my troubles from earlier. Everything was forgiven.

As we hiked out later that night to make camp beside the river, just outside of town, I only had one worrying thought. Where was I going to use the bathroom in the morning?

Chapter 29: Towards Hot Springs

"Elmer's" Sunnybank Inn is a venerable institution on the Appalachian Trail. A hostel in Hot Springs, North Carolina, the Sunnybank is located in an historic Victorian mansion mere steps from the trail, conveniently just across the street from both a 24-hour diner and a Dollar General, the favorite store of the impoverished hiker. Instead of having one large single bunk room like the Walasi Yi Center or the Palmerton Jail, the Sunnybank Inn provides guests with semi-private bedrooms that they have the privilege of sharing with only two or three random strangers. However, the Inn's justifiably famous reputation is perhaps most due to the gourmet, vegetarian and primarily organic dinner parties hosted daily by its proprietor, Elmer Hall.

Nature had skipped Elmer's on her 2009 thru-hike and had regretted it ever since. She was not about to miss out on it again. I had the sneaking suspicion that the only reason she decided to thru-hike again was to stay at the Sunnybank.

"The only reason I'm thru-hiking again is so I can stay at the Sunnybank," confessed Nature, as we headed towards a campsite just outside of town.

"I didn't know you were thru-hiking again," said Bandito. "I thought you were just killing time before you started a trail maintenance job up in Maine."

"Bandito!" I scolded, "Stop it! That may be true, but it's not narratively compelling! Or funny!"

"M.C.?" said Bandito cooly.

"What?" I said.

And then Bandito told me to do something very rude with my trekking pole. Nature laughed.

"I don't have the trail maintenance job yet," she corrected, "I have to interview for it, and that's one of the reasons I'm trying to get into town so early. I want to make sure I have cell phone reception when the woman from the Maine ATC calls me."

"What time is your interview?" asked Bandito.

"Nine."

"In the morning?" I squeaked. I couldn't believe it. "People are even awake by then?"

----

As my Thru-Hiker's Handbook claimed that Elmer's didn't accept reservations, Bandito and I were planning to get there as soon as they opened in the morning so as to secure ourselves a room. And the main reason I wanted a room was so that I could stay for dinner. Bandito and I knew that many people in the Party Group were planning to go to the Sunnybank as well, and we didn't want to get crowded out.

The three of us had been trying to stay ahead of the Party Group the entire day, with varying degrees of success. We stopped at the Deer Park Mountain Shelter to make dinner, then watched in horror as the advanced guard of Party Group started to trickle in. They were all talking excitedly about getting into town and procuring beers. Why bother thru-hiking if you're just going town to town drinking as much as possible? If they wanted to get drunk every night, why couldn't they have just stayed home and done it in their parents' basements like normal people? It didn't make sense to me, and never would. Nature and I decided it might be prudent to stealth camp somewhere closer to town.

I met a nice Canadian couple heading south on a section hike when I went to fill up my water. My grandmother lives in Toronto, so I was glad to finally have someone I could talk to about something other than the trail. Turns out they were from one of the other provinces, or maybe Ottawa, and that they hated, envied, and resented Toronto like most Americans hate, envy, and resent New York. No matter, they were incredibly polite and even gifted me some delicious protein drink mix that they'd brought down from Canada. I can't remember the name, but they said it was used by Canada's athlete in the summer Olympics to great success, but that it wasn't FDA approved. I figured that meant it had steroids in it. It was awesome.

We ran into Hobbes on our way out.

"What're you doing here?" I asked, taken aback.

"We've met once before, and you dare talk to me with that tone of indignation?" said Hobbes, offended.

Hobbes was always annoyingly articulate.

"So I'm a jerk, so what?" I said, "I just thought Bandito and I were making really good time. And, I don't know, I kind of didn't expect to see you or anyone else we'd left behind so soon."

"Have you ever considered that maybe you're not as special as you think you are?" asked Hobbes, pointedly.

"I'm sorry, I think I just slipped into a coma and blacked out for a second," I said. "Did you say something?"

And then Hobbes and I laughed like long lost friends. We would be as tight as a certain precocious and adventurous six year-old boy and his sardonic stuffed tiger from then on.

"So are you headed into Hot Springs?" asked Bandito, whom neither of us had noticed, so lost were we in each other's eyes.

"Yeah!" said Hobbes, snapping out of it. "I think I'll try to do work for stay at Elmer's. I've done that like three or four times before. He's cool."

"You've stayed at Elmer's before?" I wondered. How many times had Hobbes hiked the trail? Or was I monumentally confused about some fundamental fact?

"Yeah, well, you know," Hobbes scoffed, brushing it off. "No big deal."

"Well, try to catch up, ya hear?" I teased Hobbes, going in for a hug.

"What're you doing?" asked Hobbes, repulsed.

"I don't know," I covered. "I've got this itch on my back." I mumbled, and wandered off, working my shoulders around, completely mortified.

"Okay, well, Bye!" said Bandito.

"Yeah," said Hobbes, bemused. "See ya."

----

Nature, Bandito and I found a serviceable area to stealth came just off the trail, about a mile from the shelter. There were no great places to put our tents down, hardly any level ground, and so I proposed cowboy camping.

"Really?" asked Nature, surprised.

"Why not?" I said. "It's a nice night, we're under some trees. There are leaves and branches everywhere. What could be more comfortable?"

"Okay," she said, not sounding convinced. "If you'll do it, I'll do it too."

Twenty minutes later, I was lying on my back, staring up at a spider dangling from the branch of a pine tree over my head.

"What about the snakes?" asked Nature, a few yards away.

"What snakes?" I hadn't thought about snakes.

"Aren't you afraid they'll crawl into your sleeping bag while you're asleep? To get warm? And then when you try to get out on the morning, they'll bite you?"

"I wasn't. But I am now," I said. "Thanks a lot!"

Nature was irrationally terrified of snakes, but she had a point.

"I'm putting my tent up," I declared suddenly.

"You are?" said Nature, panicked. "Then I am too!"

And we did. And neither of us died that night. The next day, however, I would brutally murder half a dozen people, and would never be welcome in North Carolina again.